Dali: Two Dancers, 1949*
PHEASANT
You said you would kill it this morning.
Do not kill it. It startles me still,
The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing
Through the uncut grass on the elm's hill.
It is something to own a pheasant,
Or just to be visited at all.
I am not mystical: it isn't
As if I thought it had a spirit.
It is simply in its element.
That gives it a kingliness, a right.
The print of its big foot last winter,
The trail-track, on the snow in our court
The wonder of it, in that pallor,
Through crosshatch of sparrow and starling.
Is it its rareness, then? It is rare.
But a dozen would be worth having,
A hundred, on that hill-green and red,
Crossing and recrossing: a fine thing!
It is such a good shape, so vivid.
It's a little cornucopia.
It unclaps, brown as a leaf, and loud,
Settles in the elm, and is easy.
It was sunning in the narcissi.
I trespass stupidly. Let be, let be.
~ Sylvia Plath
*
WALTER BENJAMIN’S LAST DAYS
Portbou, a provincial Catalonian fishing village of only a thousand souls framed by steep hills descending towards the temperate Mediterranean, is situated where the eastern most part of Spain kisses France. That is where the German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin ingested a fatal dose of morphine tablets in a dingy room at the Hotel de Francia near the town’s gothic cathedral square, believing that the Falangists were about to deport him back to Vichy France where he’d be turned over to the Gestapo.
Benjamin, along with other German intellectual luminaries including Herman Hesse and Bertholt Brecht, had been struggling over the Pyrenees for months with the intent to make it to Portugal where they could then sail to the United States. On September 26th, however, the forty-eight-year-old Benjamin had learned that by Franco’s orders the border would be sealed beyond Portbou and refugees were to be returned to the Reich’s authority.
Contemplating the necessity of rational self-extinction, Benjamin understandably opted for the poppy. In that threadbare room, with its faded and chipped green paint, the philosopher may have thought about his contributions to critical theory—the adept readings of Goethe, Baudelaire, Kafka and Brecht, the pathbreaking analyses of how mechanical reproduction would alter the “aura” of artwork, the radical contributions to the theory of translation.
Perhaps in that last hour he thought of the abstracted, frenetic and slightly feral “angel of history” in a Paul Klee painting that he’d once owned; maybe Benjamin considered how such a being’s “face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet… while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.”
That passage, with its incantatory description of this angel buffeted by a storm “blowing in from Paradise,” is from his hallucinatory and oracular, prophetic and profound final essay “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” entrusted to his friend the philosopher Hannah Arendt before he committed suicide. She was able to escape Europe, supposedly reading passages from Benjamin’s final essay to her fellow Jewish exiles aboard the S.S. Guine as it made its way across the frigid north Atlantic towards New York.
Fortress Europe from which the refugees were fleeing was then in the process of being fully enslaved by Nazism. This is not just the obvious context of Benjamin’s suicide, but of his purpose in writing that final essay as well. Firmly a man of the left, Benjamin reserved some opprobrium for liberal politicians and their “stubborn faith in progress, their confidence in their ‘mass basis’…their servile integration in an uncontrollable apparatus.”
Belief in unalloyed and guaranteed progress is Benjamin’s biggest target, a faith shared (in different ways) by both leftists and liberals. The former may contend that dialectics ensures an inevitable revolution while the latter content themselves in the faith that the arc of history, though it be long, must ever bend towards justice, but Benjamin mocks the naivete that finds “current amazement that the things we are experiencing are ‘still’ possible in the twentieth century.”
Something jarring in Benjamin’s language, for the middle of the twentieth-century, which gave us the Holocaust and Hiroshima, has since become the standard by which we measure contemporary barbarity, yet in 1940 there was still a sense among many that atrocities were only to be found in some brutal past.
His critical acumen was sharpened through journalism and radio broadcast, the latter of which included a now lost Weimar-era series entitled Enlightenment for Children (though the charming transcripts survive) on subjects ranging from Voltaire to Pompeii, just as how in his theoretical works he analyzed everything from Victorian shopping arcades to the Kabbalah.
As his contemporary editor Michael Jennings noted, Benjamin’s writings often abandoned “all semblance of linear narrative” by incorporating “jokes, dream protocols, cityscapes, landscapes and mindscapes; portion of writing manuals, trenchant contemporary political analysis… and time and time again, remarkable penetrations into the heart of everyday things.” Style is inseparable from argument for Benjamin.
An attraction to the esoteric was an organizing principle of his sentiments and his prose style, a figure who wasn’t serious like Arendt or censorious like Theodor Adorno, but rather wondrous, if naturally and understandably melancholic. “I would like to metamorphosize into a mouse-mountain” he writes in a personal essay about hashish, opium, and mescaline, a sentence that it’s impossible to imagine dour Max Horkheimer penning.
Before he was a philosopher, Benjamin was a writer, and that makes all the difference. Cataloguing and argument were less important to Benjamin than the turn-of-phrase—”Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is… the most praiseworthy method” or “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism”—where the argument follows a poetic rather than a logical sensibility.
The result is gnomic and aphoristic, a writing that’s arguably speculative criticism more than the variety written according to the rigid dictates of scholarly convention.
Despite his ostensible Marxism, of which Benjamin was most taken by the messianism, he was ironically never a materialist so much as a mystic, with his close friend the great scholar of Jewish Kabbalah Gershom Scholem remarking that his writing was a “kind of Holy Writ.” An adherent of crazy wisdom, a sort of trickster-deity of philosophy who was more Groucho than Karl (even in appearance, with his black mustache and curly hair).
Nowhere is Benjamin’s mysticism more obvious than in “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” that short 2,500-word treatise of twenty fragmentary paragraphs where despite the work’s incredibly dry title Benjamin offers nothing less than a prescription of how one is to live during the ruptures of history, how one is to create meaning in the face of a fascist politics promising to grind your face into the dust, a totalizing regime where “even the dead won’t be safe.”
As occult as the work sometimes reads, this was estimably practical for a Jew escaping the Nazis, for in the seven years after Hitler’s rise to power, a Parisian exile was the setting for Benjamin’s reflections on despair and hope, fascism and liberation, so that “Theses on the Philosophy of History” was what he clutched as the Maginot Line collapsed and he had to flee the Wehrmacht. From his bedside in Portbou, from the stern side of the Guine, this strange and beautiful work calls out to us eight decades later.
Less theory than incantation, less criticism than conjuration, less scholarship than prophecy, Benjamin’s essay offers not historiography or detailed, cited references laboriously cross-checked and marked by rigor, but something closer to scripture. The immediacy of what Benjamin and others then faced, the gaping abyss of Nazism and the demonic malignancy infecting Europe necessitated nothing less than a work penned not in ink on paper than by pillars of fire on stone.
In the first fragment he describes a “Mechanical Turk” that entertained audiences in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century. A miniature and mustachioed automaton outfitted with a turban and hookah pipe, this Orientalist contraption of gears and levers was brought to the great capitals of Europe where it played games of chess that it won brilliantly.
This prodigious robot, who during his career beat both Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin, seemed to be a simulacrum of genius, an artificial intelligence predating the digital revolution by two centuries. It was a fantasy, however, for within the contraption was a diminutive chess master who unseen bested all of his opponents.
“One can imagine a philosophical counterpart to this device,” Benjamin allegorizes, the “puppet called ‘historical materialism’ is to win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the services of theology, which today, as we know, is wizened and has to keep out of sight.”
Unlike his Marxist comrades, Benjamin’s materialism was a chimera for something deeper and more transcendent, for both the angelic and the demonic. If others were surprised by fascism’s rise or thought that it could be explained away only by recourse to economic concerns, then it was because they had for too long denied the existence of that wizard manipulating the puppet, of humanity’s capacity for evil.
The diagnosis of what ails culture and society is in some ways also its prescription. Once we identify these various gods of this world—capitalism, fascism—as the religions they are, a means of resistance becomes available. The irony is that the only means of resisting them is, of course, also religious.
Though Benjamin’s advice may sound hermetic, obscure, and occult, it nonetheless needs to be internalized, for if we hope for a “revolutionary change in the fight for the oppressed,” we must work towards a “Messianic cessation of happening,” that the present must be “shot through with chips of Messianic time.”
This is neither revolution nor mere metaphor. It’s an invitation towards that most crucial thing, only glancingly alluded to by Benjamin, but the basis of his entire piece—hope.
Benjamin was an acolyte of that kabbalistic belief in tikkun olam, that is to say that our universe is cracked and broken, but it’s the individual choice of each person to restore those shards, even while—especially because—salvation isn’t guaranteed. Millennium isn’t imposed, it’s collectively chosen—and it’s always possible. “For every second of time,” Benjamin concludes, is the “strait gate through which Messiah might enter.”
Revolution and redemption, reform and restoration are ever possible, even if distant. That hope, in the most perilous and dire of times, must always endure.
The day after Benjamin killed himself, Franco lifted the restriction on the refugees passing through to Portugal and then America. It’s possible that Benjamin’s death itself might have put pressure on the Spanish to do so. Following his burial in Portbou, the briefcase in which he’d once carried “Theses on the Philosophy of History” went missing.
His satchel contained one final essay, the actual last writing of Benjamin. It’s never been found. Maybe one day it will be.
https://lithub.com/how-walter-benjamins-iconic-antifascist-essay-escaped-europe?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lit+Hub+Daily%3A+December+13%2C+2024&utm_term=lithub_master_list
*
TEN AMERICAS
The gap in life expectancy across the United States between people who live the longest and the shortest has widened dramatically over the past two decades, growing to 20 years in 2021, up from 12 in 2000, according to a new study published in scientific journal The Lancet).
The analysis reveals stark differences in how long Americans live, shaped by income, race and ethnicity, and geographic location. These disparities divide the nation into what researchers describe as “ten Americas,” underscoring the significant inequalities in opportunity and health outcomes across the country.
“The extent and magnitude of health disparities in the USA are truly alarming. In a country with the wealth and resources of the USA, it is intolerable that so many are living in conditions and with health outcomes akin to those of an entirely different country,” wrote the researchers—coming from the University of Washington and the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank.
“America 1" is made up of Asian and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) populations living in counties where NHPI individuals made up less than 30% of the total Asian and NHPI population in 2020. This group had the highest life expectancy in 2021 at 84 years old.
“America 2”: Latino individuals in counties outside the Southwest, as opposed to Latinos living in the Southwest—which represent their own “America” in the study—had a life expectancy of 79.4 years old.
“America 3" is made up of white, Asian and American Indian or Alaska Native individuals who lived in areas not included in other Americas. This group had a life expectancy of 77.9 years old.
“America 4”: This group is made up of the white population living in non-metropolitan counties in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, where income per capita was below $32,363 in 2020. Their life expectancy in 2021 was 77 years old.
“America 5” — Latinos living in the Southwestern states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas had a life expectancy of 76 years old.
“America 6”: Black individuals who lived in areas not included in the study’s other “Americas” had a life expectancy of 72 years old.
“America 7”: The study’s “America 7" is made up of Black individuals who live in highly segregated, high-population metropolitan counties. Their life expectancy was 71.5 years old.
“America 8”: This “America” is made up of the white population living in counties in Appalachia and the Lower Mississippi Valley, where the income per capita among the white population was less than $32,363 in 2020. The life expectancy of this group was 71.1 years old.
“America 9”: This group consists of the Black population living in non-metropolitan counties in the Lower Mississippi Valley or Deep South, where income per capita among the Black populations in these area was below $32,363 in 2020. Their life expectancy was 68 years old.
“America 10" had the lowest life expectancy at 63 years old. This group is made up of the AIAN [American Indian and Alaska Native] population living in counties in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.
US life expectancy at birth is now at 76.1 years, versus 77.1 for China, vs 84 for Japan.
https://qz.com/american-life-expectancy-income-ethnicity-geography-1851706480/slides/11
Oriana:
It's not all genetic. East Asians living in Asia have a long life expectancy and a resistance to cancer. But if they move to the US and their children start eating the American diet, this advantage gradually disappears
*
ARE RUSSIANS CRUEL?
As a nation, Russians are the cruelest people I know.
I haven’t been in close contact with radical islamists, they could be on the same level — but for Russians, that’s the whole society, not just certain individuals — men, women, elders, kids.
The ‘cruelization’ starts at the early age — basically, from birth. Actually, before birth — with fights between the parents.
The ideas of gentleness, compassion, politeness seem to have been lost in the modern Russian society — even compared to the ruthless Soviet times.
People in Russia aren’t tougher today than 33 years ago — they are more brutal. Both men and women speak in profanities — I hear it on videos of Ukrainian drone strikes at Russian military bases — people just scream non-stop profanities. It’s not “Gosh, look at this! That’s a drone flying!” It will be a sentence where every single word is a profanity.
The language that people in Russia are using reflects the cruelty of their daily reality, and in turn, shapes their internal attitude to this reality.
The view of their reality as a “total screw up” isn’t typical just for the Russian soldiers thrown into the meat grinder of the Ukrainian front (it’s worth pointing out that the vast majority of them went there voluntarily, tempted by high wages that Putin pays for killing Ukrainians in their home country) — this view is typical for all Russians, except maybe residents of privileged Moscow suburbs.
But already in underprivileged Moscow suburbs, the people see their reality as a “total screw up”.
It’s “dog eats dog” world.
It’s the same in the privileged Moscow suburbs — just these people feel that they are the masters of this slave market. But the competition is even tougher — and the stakes are higher.
Privileged Muscovites — the ones you might come across holidaying at Emirates or Thailand — are just as cruel, but they are hiding it behind the veneer of superficial omniscience and gloss of fashion.
Every Russian citizen living in Russia lives in a society where you aren’t allowed to say the truth or express your true feelings. You can never show what you feel or say what you think. And if you do, you or your family can suffer or die.
Now think what it does to your psyche.
You absolutely constantly have to control not just your words, facial expressions and gestures, but also thoughts and feelings. You are actually terrified of “wrong” thoughts in your head.
And you have to control those around you, particularly the kids. Most people can’t even tell what they feel or think to their parents, friends or spouse.
I understand how it feels, because I lived in the Soviet Union. It was the same, only not as intense. Because the Soviet Union wasn’t fighting a genocidal war in a neighboring country, trying to erase a 42-million nation, while proclaiming that it’s an existential fight for our own country. There weren’t missiles and drones attacking targets in Russia daily, with giant explosions and week-long unextinguishable fires. There were no graveyards with rows and rows of fresh graves of young men with country flags over them.
Note the tanks being transported by train.
There were no daily videos of destroyed cities — destroyed by the same young men who went to kill people in the neighboring country.
City, after city, after city — all looking the same, after being “liberated” by the Russian army.
There was nothing like that in Soviet times.
And now, Russians as a nation and individually must approve this destruction and genocide against the whole “brotherly” people living next door — or it will be already you who will be tortured and destroyed by the mighty FSB machine.
Regardless of how the person truly feels about it — genuinely approves it or pretends to approve — their emotional and mental makeup is severely affected by the need to function in this reality daily.
The Russians are either morally depraved or broken inside.
Being cruel is a natural survival mechanism in a cruel reality. Yet, they’ve chosen this reality for themselves. ~ Elena Gold
Lindz:
It's only one small example, but remember that ruzzian woman telling her soldier husband fighting in Ukraine, that's its ok if he rapes ukrainian women? That was a hard one to wrap my head around.
Elena Gold:
There was also that dialogue of mother and son discussing horrible torture of Ukrainian POWs — and how he would gladly use it on his estranged father.
Ian Minto:
I remember hearing a phone call from a wife, she was saying that their daughter needed a new computer, and if he could look for one and bring it home.
It was then I realized that it wasn't just Putins war.
Elena Gold:
It’s not about nationality, but about values. Russians as a nation feel they have the right to rule over other nations — they invade neighboring countries, with elites seeking power and resources. Ukrainians don’t want to live in the Russian GULAG again. They lived in it before.
LooneyTunes
Have a Russian friend, a single mother raising 2 boys. She admitted that she and other Russian mothers are too mean to their kids and they end up bringing to the world screwed-up and cruel people. Not that this matters but before Ukraine invasion pre Feb-2022 she was pro-Putin.
Elena Gold:
Putin wasn’t chosen democratically. He was appointed by Yeltsin as a successor — he was de facto ruler. Then Putin blew up 3 residential buildings in Russia, killed 300 people — and then started the Second Chechen War, turning Grozny into ruins. Then Russians voted for him.
Strummer Pinks:
Change is possible! I am a teacher and I see it every day. Kids who are dropped into a different environment where they are encouraged to treat people with kindness and empathy— where there is accountability for cruel actions and you can’t just use your status or money to bypass the rules— where there is empathy— this does change people. I have seen it. If the majority of the people around you behave in a different way to this cruelty and crassness, you will change. Humans adapt to their surroundings. If kindness improves your status in a social setting, people will become kinder. I have seen it happen. The brain can change especially if you start training young. It can happen in the opposite direction too.
Michael Van In:
Pull a Russian into a politer, kinder society and s/he changes. No guesswork about it. Obviously there are bad people who will tend to choose the cruel and selfish option, regardless of their environment. But the majority do change.
Mat Macauley:
Youtube clips of Russian dashcams are another window into their world. Lots of drunk drivers. Little seatbelt use. People carrying clubs and baseball bats in their cars to use on other people’s windshields (including women). Lots of fistfights and road rage incidents. Many insane and suicidal driving maneuvers, severe speeding even on snowy roads. And tons of vulgar words. The road fatality rate in Russia is far higher than the west.
Rob Stuart:
The so-called ‘Russian Federation’ (de facto Muscovian fascist-imperialist mafia empire) is plagued by intergenerational, communal and personal traumatization — more than any other region in the world.
Don’t believe me? Then study the region’s history over the past several centuries. The extent and level of barbaric brutality is mind-numbing.
Daniel Aaron:
I remember someone describing Russian culture as basically a prison yard. I’ve never been there myself, but based on this description, it seems pretty fair.
Elena Gold:
Prison culture spilled into the general population now in Russia — literally. Google A.U.E. (a criminal gang)
Oriana:
I think cruelty has something to do with poverty, including the brutal language used by those who have to claw their way just to survive. There was an Oscar-winning South Korean movie, Parasite, where someone says, “Mrs. Kim is rich, but she’s nice.” The character’s mother corrects the speaker: “You’ve got it in reverse. Mrs. Kim is nice because she is rich.” Being rich usually means less stress. Less stress means less need for aggression. Of course there are many exceptions, and many confounding variables such as education. But on the whole, richer means nicer: the jovial men, the soft-voiced women.
On the other hand, children who were brutalized in childhood will likely be brutal in adulthood (men), or "perpetual victims" (women).
*
UKRAINE CONCENTRATES ON RUSSIA’S RAILROADS
Another Russian train goes cablew.
The attack itself wasn’t that important, Russians lost a train and a track that can be repaired within a week, fuel that they already have a stockpile of, plus a few train cars and locomotives they still have plenty of remaining. The strike itself only delayed Russian operations for a week or two and caused manageable damage to the Russian war effort.
However it should be noted the HIMARS strike that took out a rail track and 40 fuel tanks was not the only thing happening over the weekend. Ukrainian saboteurs took out five locomotives near Ulyanovsk, Russia, as well as several other hits. It would appear Ukrainians identified Russian railways as a key weakness in their logistical chain and are targeting them for destruction.
The strike itself isn’t that important, a minor bruise in what is already a lengthy and costly struggle. However taken with several other similar events happening around the same time it’s a part of something bigger, something that can really affect Russian operations. One strike alone won’t do much, but dozens of strikes like that one will put serious pressure on Russia.
The financial cost of the war and the damage suffered already exceeds any likely monetary gain from the conquered areas by a somewhat silly factor. That too is a consideration, at least in the long term. The war will end someday and the more damage Ukraine can inflict on Russia the sooner that day comes and the longer it will take for a new round of hostilities to emerge. Do enough damage and maybe Russia stays fixed on their own internal problems for a generation or more and that would, potentially, enable Ukraine to remain safe from Russia indefinitely by joining up with the civilized world.
It’s not something a single destroyed train can achieve. But the destruction of that train does help in achieving that goal. ~ Tomaž Vargazon, Quora
Tom Bohannon:
Russia can’t repair/replace locomotives. The degradation of their rail transport will be compensated for, until it can’t. Until that happens, you’ll think “what a waste of weapons.”
Then, you’ll say you were behind the brilliant strategy all along.
David Sandbrook:
Remember the movie the Great Escape? Based on a true story. 150 soldiers escaping was a nuisance and embarrassment more than real threat. The overall effect was not known until after the war. A troop train of replacement soldiers bound for the eastern front was delayed so the soldiers could be used to help search for the prisoners. Because of that delay, the troop train arrived in the east a week late. The units that were planned to receive the replacements were understaffed. During that week, the Russian army broke through the weak German lines. The German lines crumpled. It is like the butterfly effect. An escape by 150 British soldiers allowed a Russian offensive to succeed. Had the troop train arrived on time would the offensive have still succeeded? That is speculation. But you cannot discount it.
Adrian Webb:
All the little attacks add up. 20 oil tank carriages is not much, but if kept up there will come a point where there will be a lack of oil tank carriages to go with the already present lack of recruits.
*
PUTIN’S LIES ABOUT HISTORY
After his rise to power, Putin also appropriated the victory in WWII as Russia’s own – conveniently omitting that roughly half of the soldiers that fought and died in that war on the side of the Soviet Union were Ukrainian.
The fact that the USSR had no chance of winning the fight against Hitler without American Lend-Lease is rarely mentioned these days in Russia – while the fact of Stalin signing a friendship pact with Hitler in 1939 and then the USSR attacking and occupying a part of Poland and Finland, as well as whole territories of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are all but taboo in Putinland.
Cannon fodder? Heroes don’t think – “They do the right thing, sacrifice their lives for motherland” (that’s an actual quote by a Russian official).
It’s like collective schizophrenia, bordering on paranoia that “evil NATO would be by now bombing your apartment building, if we didn’t start bombing Ukraine first.” ~ Elena Gold, Quora
Michael Kelly:
The Russian people are not being told about their losses. Putin is hiding the level of losses from them and perhaps from himself although I do not believe he is capable of having any human feeling for another human.
Artie Shendrikov:
The very word “bogatyr” (“hero”) is allegedly derived from the Mongol-Tatar language. “Russky bogatyr” sounds ironic indeed. But that explains a lot.
Slav Kachaev:
Bogatyr comes from Old Mongolian Bagatur, in Modern Mongolian Baatar, or Batyr in Turkic languages
Matthias Heinze:
Superb. The glorious Soviet Union that defeated the Nazis (single handed) is a myth that has to die rather quickly.
David Mitchell:
Dont forget that the USSR provided ice breakers to assist the passage of German warships into the Pacific via the Arctic.
Also the number of tanks outside Moscow that were British. And the number of vehicles that the US provided. One could go on.
I'm sure the attempted invasion of Denmark in 1945 being stopped by one British captain does not get a mention either.
Jerry Harris:
The one (and there is only one) important missing ingredient is the detestable role of the Russian Orthodox Church and robed, righteous-less Kirill its declining patriarch. Add this metaphysical witchcraft to the apathy and ‘it ain’t on my doorstep yet’-ness and you truly do have THE recipe for Russia’s meltdown.
Sam Lair:
Moscow became the deputized gatherers of tribute for Genghis Khan, and thus, became the center of power for that part of the world — a position they later greatly expanded into an empire that fell apart in 1991 and now wish to reestablish.
David Moe:
The Ukrainians offered to ship a trainload of refrigerated dead Russian soldiers back to Russia, and the Russians refused to accept it. That appears to be their attitude to war casualties. Pretend it didn’t happen. You can get 15 years in prison for mentioning the word “war” in Russia.
It is like the Winter War of 1939–40 between Russia and Finland. The Finns buried the Russian casualties in the woods and gave the Russians maps of the graves, and the maps got lost. So we don’t know where or how many Russians were killed in the war, but the approximate answer is “a lot”.
That is the way the Russians run their wars. When the Russians took a census of the Russian population after WW2, there were a lot fewer Russians than expected, so Stalin had the census takers executed.
Tamas Polgar:
IN RUSSIA THERE IS NO CONCEPT OF “WE, THE PEOPLE”
The Russian public isn’t the American public.
Holding the ruling class responsible is simply not a concept.
There is no “We, the People”.
There is a mass of nameless, faceless people, who are the Russians.
And there are the rulers: the Tsars, the Politburo or Putin.
If the ruler is benevolent enough, he will provide for their people.
If not, well, tough luck, Russians!
That’s not to say the Russians are mere biorobots. Yet they have a different social attitude from Westerners. Unlike in Western societies, individualism, deviancies are generally frowned upon. The first and foremost obligation of a Russian person is to contribute to society, starting from family, and ending with nation. Success is measured as being a useful member of society, while providing for their family. Being different and special isn’t super important for a Russian person.
A society like this isn’t scared of deaths, and won’t freak out over war losses. Of course they aren’t happy, but they won’t curse at Putin, and demand a different government.
They accept that this is their fate.
You can’t understand Russia with a Western mind.
Pertti Jaakkola on why Russians don’t honor their military dead with flag-draped coffins:
Russia doesn't have a similar culture of respect towards their soldiers. In the US, serving in the military is seen as a very heroic act, while in Russia many of those in service were conscripted. Also, Russia has a very different nationalistic sentiment than that in the US, so military personnel aren't seen as protectors like they are in the US.
2 - Russia is currently in a large scale war with over ten thousand soldiers dead in a month. The US has for a long time only taken part in proxy wars where they lose maybe one or two soldiers a month, so receiving them is much more practical.
3 - Related to the previous point, Russia does not currently have the logistical capacity and/or interest to really transport bodies. The US could easily throw a few coffins on a transport plane once a month, but Russia cannot feasibly transport thousands of coffins to Moscow. Instead, the bodies are cremated on the front lines or just left there.
A family getting the body of their barely adult son will diminish Putin's approval ratings, when they could just be left in the dark about the death of their son and be kept in the belief that everything's going well.
John Frazier:
I
suspect if Putin gave honest comment (mad idea I know, but bear with
me) he'd admit that the real threat from the West isn't NATO and war,
but the cultural example that an improvement in government and living
standards is achievable for normal people.
IN BRIEF:
Igor Kirilov, top Russian general in charge of chemical and biological weapons and disinformation, was killed when a Ukrainian-planted bomb exploded as he left his Moscow apartment.
Ukraine said that North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian troops suffered heavy losses during fighting in the Russian region of Kursk.
Oriana:
When I still lived in Warsaw, I didn’t know what to do with “We, the people.” It vaguely sounded like communist propaganda — while everyone knew it wasn’t the people who had a voice in government, but the communist party. “The people,” however, was a convenient cliché, an all-pervasive lie we heard and read every day. The dictatorship called itself “a people’s democracy.”
What did strike me and truly excited me was “You have the right to remain silent.” No way can you have the right to remain silent in an Orwellian regime! That’s was a revolutionary concept: “You have the right to remain silent.”
*
RUSSIA, THE TZAR BOMBA, AND OTHER ECOLOGICAL DISASTERS
The situation in Kerch Strait is worsening due to a fuel spill after two Russian tankers were damaged and sunk, and a third on damaged and leaking, leaving huge amounts of oil spilled in the water. 
Russia is dangerous because it’s careless, lawless, and violent. This relates not only to international politics — right now, Russia is destroying the Black Sea ecosystem, because its unsafe oil tankers are breaking in storms, with fuel oil covering already 50 km of the beaches near the Kerch Strait separating Russian coast and the occupied Crimea.
The Soviet Union had issues environmentally, also. I watched a documentary over several episodes on Chernobyl. That was commissioned before the correct tests had been done, so that the engineer and his people could receive bonus payments for "finishing" the construction on time. It should never have been online until the tests were carried out. Now, nobody lives for kilometers around because everything has been contaminated. I have read there are a number of environmental messes that they never reported over the years. Then there was that silly Tsar Bomba they let off up on some island near the North Pole. It was a crazy thing to do. It couldn't be used in warfare because it was too heavy to be flown anywhere in a plane, and no missile could carry a warhead so heavy. It destroyed the whole island, with radiation going everywhere, all to pretend they were so powerful. It was a schizophrenic regime in many ways and is worse now as the Russian Federation. Why are they so scared? ~ Mark Kempson, Quora
Roy Kaikarainem:
Sverny Island was not destroyed by the Tsar Bomba, but the village of Sverny, 55 km from ground zero, was.
Markus Hartman:
There is a steady traffic of obsolete, rusty tankers with Russian oil in the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic sea with crews unaccusomed to winter and sea ice conditions. Russia is a bloody, dirty mess with a flying Dutchman kind of captain.
The fleet of dangerous Russian tankers sails around the world — Russia purchased old tankers and registered them in some overseas jurisdictions to avoid sanctions, and now is using the ships without proper maintenance or insurance, possibly, managed by poorly qualified crew, not managing the ship according to the weather conditions.
Russia is a danger to the whole world.
Carlo Fonda;
Ruzzia (and USSR before it) has no limit in the damage they will do to the world environment, willingly for -mostly illicit- profit or just for sheer ignorance and stupidity… anyone remember the Aral Sea disaster? A country and a people able to such a stupid move like destroying an entire (freshwater) sea has no hope to survive.
Robert Hall:
Ruzzia (and USSR before it) has no limit in the damage they will do to the world environment, willingly for — mostly illicit — profit or just for sheer ignorance and stupidity… anyone remember the Aral Sea disaster? A country and a people able to such a stupid move like destroying an entire (freshwater) sea has no hope to survive.
Elena Gold:
Apparently, the tankers were anchored for a month there. Because there is nowhere to put the fuel oil. They were there as storage on water.
Oriana:
Obviously, Russia’s guiding motto is not only NO LIVES MATTER. It’s worse than that. THE EARTH DOESN’T MATTER.
As Evgeny Prigozhin said not long before Putin’s aerial revenge, what matters is GREED AND AMBITION. By “ambition” he meant the imperialist ambition to keep on expanding the empire.
It’s often said that Putin wants to restore the former Soviet Union. That makes some sense: after all, Putin publicly stated that the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century was the fall of the Soviet Union. But some observers have noted that restoring the Soviet Union would not be enough. Putin wants to restore the pre-Soviet Russian Empire, which was larger, including much of Poland, for instance.
I think that, as imperialist ambition goes, that’s too modest a description. Russia would like to reach the Atlantic ocean. “From Liston to Vladivostok” is a more fitting motto.
But why stop at the Atlantic? There is, after all, Alaska. Putin does not regard the sale of Alaska to the United States to be valid. Why? Because the Russian government back then “did not represent the will of the people.” Don’t be surprised if one day Putin declares Alaska to be yet another “historically Russian territory.”
Today Ukraine, tomorrow the whole world, to paraphrase an old Nazi slogan.
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TZAR BOMBA: THE LARGEST NUCLEAR BOMB IN WORLD HISTORY
The combined force of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings was minuscule in comparison to the Tzar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.
The nuclear arms race that originated in the race for atomic weapons during World War II reached a culminating point on October 30, 1961, with the detonation of the Tzar Bomba, the largest and most powerful nuclear weapon ever constructed.
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, placed the United States in an apparently unchallengable position as the world’s only possessor of nuclear weapons. But that primacy didn’t last long. The Soviet Union had made halting progress in its own nuclear weapons program during the war, and in 1945 Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin ordered an intensification of these efforts. Soviet penetration of the British and American atomic weapons programs thanks to the activities of spies such as Klaus Fuchs aided the efforts of Soviet scientists to design and construct their own weapons.
The Soviets successfully tested their first atomic weapon on August 29, 1949, after which both superpowers upped the ante by working furiously to develop the far more powerful thermonuclear weapons, or hydrogen bombs. The United States got there first, testing their Ivy Mike Test on November 1, 1952; but once again the Soviets were close behind. Soviet scientist Andrei Sakharov, heading his country’s research into thermonuclear weapons (thanks again in part to information provided by Fuchs) oversaw the detonation of a hydrogen bomb on August 12, 1953 at the Semipalatinsk test site in what is now Kazakhstan.
From there the United States and the Soviet Union carried out a further series of open-air tests of atomic weapons. Great Britain emulated these with open air atomic weapons tests in the late 1950s (France would follow with tests in Polynesia in the 1960s and beyond.) While the Americans focused on perfecting accurate delivery systems for small to medium size atomic devices, however, the Soviets concentrated on building larger and larger devices of almost unimaginable power. The Tzar Bomba was the outcome.
The site chosen for testing this device was Mityushikha Bay on Severny Island in the Arctic Circle. Sakharov also played a significant role in designing this weapon, which incorporated multiple inter-reacting stages and was 26 feet long, almost seven feet in diameter, and weighed almost 60,000 pounds. A Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bomber was designated to deliver the device from 34,000 feet. The bomb would be attached to a parachute to slow its descent to detonation at 13,000 feet, giving the bomber and its escort additional time to escape at least thirty miles away before detonation. Even so, the crewmen were told that they only had a 50 percent chance of survival (they barely made it.)
The detonation was astronomically powerful—over 1,570 times more powerful, in fact, than the combined two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Tzar Bomba’s yield was 50 megatons: ten times more powerful than all of the ordnance exploded during the whole of World War II. The mushroom cloud was 25 miles wide at its base and almost 60 miles wide at its top. At 40 miles high, it penetrated the stratosphere. Everything within three dozen miles of the impact was vaporized, but severe damage extended to 150 miles radius—enough to entirely annihilate any modern major city, including suburbs. Windows in faraway Norway and Finland were shattered by the force of the blast.
Said one aerial eyewitness: “The clouds beneath the aircraft and in the distance were lit up by the powerful flash. The sea of light spread under the hatch and even clouds began to glow and became transparent. At that moment, our aircraft emerged from between two cloud layers and down below in the gap a huge bright orange ball was emerging. The ball was powerful and arrogant like Jupiter. Slowly and silently it crept upwards... Having broken through the thick layer of clouds it kept growing. It seemed to suck the whole Earth into it. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal, supernatural.”
Castle Bravo test on the Bikini Atoll, 1954: The largest nuclear device ever detonated by the United States, with a yield of 15 megatons.
The resulting radioactive fallout might have been catastrophic, not just for the Soviet Union but for its neighbors. And it would have, if the Tzar Bomba’s original concept—yielding an almost inconceivable 100 megatons—had been pursued. Fortunately, because of the height at which the device was detonated, the accompanying five-mile-wide fireball was repelled away from the surface by the force of its own shockwave and did not make contact with the earth, thus greatly reducing the amount of fallout. But the results might easily have been very different.
A test of this magnitude could not have been concealed, and indeed now-Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had every intention of shocking the world by the Tzar Bomba’s power. However, condemnation was instantaneous—not just from the United States and its allies, but from the whole world. Up to this point, the United States and the Soviet Union (and Great Britain) had carried out hundreds of open-air nuclear weapons tests. Andrei Sakharov, horrified not just by the Tzar Bomba but by the cumulative effects of the emissions of all of these tests, became a strong supporter of imposing limitations on these tests in future.
Perhaps the only beneficial result of the Tzar Bomba’s world-threatening display was the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of August 5, 1963, signed by the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain. Even today, however, the power of the Tzar Bomba — and much more — lies within easy grasp of every nuclear-capable nation.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/tsar-bomba-largest-atomic-test-world-history
AFTERMATH:
All of the wooden and brick buildings in nearby Severny, located 34 miles from the aiming point or ground zero, were annihilated. In other Soviet districts located over a hundred miles from ground zero, wooden houses were demolished, and brick and stone ones suffered damages.
Radio communication outages were also reported. One test witness felt the thermal effects at a distance of 170 miles, even with dark goggles. The intense heat from the detonation was capable of causing third-degree burns at a distance of 62 miles from ground zero. The shock wave was felt as far away as the Dikson settlement located 430 miles away, and windows shattered at a distance of 560 miles. Windows even shattered as far away as Norway and Finland due to atmospheric focusing of the shock wave.
Despite being an air burst detonated 13,000 feet above ground, Tzar Bomba’s seismic magnitude was estimated at 5–5.25. Seismic sensors continued to register shockwaves even after a third revolution around the Earth.
The original Atomic Energy Commission estimate of the Tzar Bomba yield was 55–60 megatons, but since the end of the Cold War and fall of the Soviet Union, all Russian sources have confirmed its yield as 50 megatons. Even though calculations suggested the explosion would reach the ground, this was prevented when the bomb’s extremely large shock wave was reflected. The fireball nearly reached the altitude of the release aircraft. At the point of detonation, the aircraft dropped approximately one half mile in altitude due to the shock wave, but would make it to safety. The Tzar Bomba mushroom cloud was approximately 40 miles high, seven times higher than Mount Everest. The cloud reached higher than the stratosphere at its highest altitude. The top of the cloud had a width of 59 miles and the base a width of 25 miles.
The extreme damage and devastation wrought by thermonuclear weapons like the Tzar Bomba is unimaginable. If such a weapon exploded in a large American city such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, or Washington, D.C., their metropolitan areas plus large portions of their surrounding suburbs would be completely destroyed and nearly devoid of all life.
The Tzar Bomba, code name VanyaThe Tsar Bomba leveled the uninhabited village of Severny, 34 miles from ground zero. It also destroyed buildings over 100 miles away, and damaged brick and stone structures in other Soviet districts.
The Tsar Bomba's shockwave:
Circled the globe three times
Shattered glass windows in buildings more than 400 miles away
Incinerated the ground below the blast
Created a flare that could be seen from Alaska, Greenland, and Norway
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/tsar-bomba/
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THE RECENT TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN POLITICS
The 2024 election represented the consolidation of a slow transformation in American party politics. In the mid-20th century, Democratic and Republican support was rooted in a particular combination of class politics and political geography, with Democrats’ emerging strength centered in blue-collar areas, especially in small cities and factory towns across the urban industrial North, and Republicans enjoying far greater success in middle-class suburbs. Over the ensuing 75 years, however, that electoral map has slowly, but inexorably, inverted, thanks to changes in the U.S. economy that have opened the door for cultural politics to drive Americans’ partisanship.
During the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democrats slowly became the party of the (largely white) working classes, who were the intended beneficiaries of his plethora of New Deal programs. This relationship was cemented by an economy rooted in the industrial production of goods in cities, as well as the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935 — which gave industrial workers the right to organize. This combination meant that American workers became part of an organized, politically coherent working class majority. It also meant that the Democrats’ new voters were geographically concentrated in northern, industrialized cities and towns.
The Democrats remained the dominant party in the U.S. until the 1950s. After the Federal-Aid Highway Act passed in 1956 — which made it possible to commute into the city for work — many middle-class, often ideologically conservative white people abandoned attempts to “defend” city neighborhoods and schools from the Black population, and instead moved to suburbs. This turned the suburbs into Republican strongholds, as issues like busing, school prayer, and sex education mobilized parents into the GOP.
The result was a class-based politics in the U.S. — perhaps for the first time. But from its inception, the relationship between class, geography, and party politics rested on two shaky foundations. First, the disenfranchisement of Black voters in the South before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 suppressed racial politics. Second, cultural issues like abortion had not yet become partisan and many weren't even political. Instead, they remained scarcely discussed private matters. But as liberal social movements emerged and mobilized in the 1960s and 1970s, and conservatives organized their own counter-movement to oppose measures such as the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, legalized abortion, and more, these two preconditions broke down.
Then, in the 1970s and 1980s, the economic and organizational foundation of America’s class-based politics started to erode. Domestic manufacturing jobs began disappearing as companies increasingly relied on automation or moved production to countries where labor was cheaper. Unions came under sustained attacks from Republicans, as well as employers. The result was that many American workers, particularly those without a college degree, faced a decline in the quality of work available to them: the share of workers receiving “decent” wages (two-thirds of the mean wage for American workers) fell from 61.5% to 55% between 1979 and 2017.
But even as the country shed manufacturing work, the economy witnessed extraordinary growth in professional and technological jobs as part of the new “knowledge economy.” These gains and losses, however, were not distributed evenly across space. While large cities benefited most from new knowledge economy jobs, the small towns dotted across the industrial Heartland — the former backbone of the Democrats’ coalition — suffered.
In 2019, I visited three of these places: postindustrial cities in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Indiana, which had all been part of the white, working-class, New Deal coalition. Like so many others places that were once integral to the Democratic coalition, two of these cities are now firmly Republican.
In Minnesota, the town I visited was still grappling with scars from economic decline. The community’s largest employer, which had been a union shop since its workers won a contentious labor battle in the late 1930s, went through multiple bankruptcies and layoffs in the 1980s and 1990s. Ultimately, in the late 1990s, it shuttered. When the good union jobs left, young people followed. The result is that the county has lost 20% of its population since 1980 and has aged at a much faster rate than the country as a whole.
The loss of the plant meant more than just economic decline for the town. It also changed the fabric of the community’s civil society. Although the union that had represented the workers at the defunct company still exists, it is no longer the political organization that it was during its earliest days, when it fought employers for workplace protections alongside engaging in activism and politicking to further protect the working class.
The result is that, much like in other similar places throughout the country, unionization no longer equates to working-class political socialization that helps bind workers to the Democratic Party. Instead, as one interviewee from Indiana explained, unions have become more of an “insurance policy,” in case something goes wrong on the job.
These changes have clear implications for contemporary politics. “When I was Democrat, the Democrat Party was for the workers,” explained a man I’ll call Keith, a retired, white union worker living in the small Minnesota town. “They’re not anymore, you know, that’s gone.”
Keith was one of many people who helped turn his community to the right in 2016, and helped keep it there since. After watching the economic and civic foundations of their community crumble, Keith and many others began to worry that their town was dying — and that no one was doing anything to help them.
By 2016, the GOP had capitalized on this sentiment, offering residents like Keith something to blame for the plight of their town: immigration and Democrats pushing socialism. This ultimately drew many residents of this Minnesota town to the Republican side.
These postindustrial cities and towns explain why former swing states like Ohio are now solidly red, while former Democratic strongholds like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have become the ultimate swing states.
If the turn to the Right across the American heartland had been the only change during this period, it might've spelled doom for the Democrats. Instead, though, a countervailing force has been developing over the last 30 years. Just as economic decline and cultural politics were driving industrial towns rightward, the burgeoning knowledge economy and cultural politics were driving suburbs leftward. The process began in some of the largest metro areas, places like Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago. More recently, distaste over Donald Trump's politics have prompted Southern suburbs to begin to migrate toward Democrats.
Today, the number of knowledge economy workers — people who are more likely to embrace the Democratic Party’s socially liberal agenda — in the country’s largest cities and their surrounding suburbs continues to grow. As one interviewee from Belmont, Calif., a Bay Area suburb, told me in 2022, he thinks of the classic “Bay area liberal” as someone who is “pro-choice” but could be more “fiscally conservative.”
Taken together, the transformations in postindustrial communities like Keith’s and in affluent suburbs like Belmont mark a near-complete inversion of the political geography and class politics that dominated American politics in the mid-20th century. Many of the same working-class towns and cities that once propelled the Democrats’ coalition are now overwhelmingly right-leaning.
The opposite is true of many of the suburbs that were once Republican strongholds: they're now the sites of greatest growth for the Democratic Party. Growing suburban liberalism has put Georgia, Arizona, and even North Carolina on the map for Democrats. Just a few cycles ago, Democrats didn’t even run in Georgia; and yet in 2024, the Atlanta suburbs were one of the few places where Democrats made gains.
This basic political geography means that Democrats might need to ask themselves a broader question as they look to rebound. Instead of asking, what might they do differently to recapture the working class votes necessary to win Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and therefore the Electoral College, the question may be more, what kind of economy and civil society do they need to build to change and expand the political map?
https://time.com/7199914/2024-election-electoral-map-history/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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JEWISH HUMOR (NOT NEW, BUT STILL FUNNY)
* If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?
* Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?
* Drink tea and nourish life; with the first sip, joy; with the second sip, satisfaction; with the third sip, peace; with the fourth, a Danish.
* Wherever you go, there you are.. Your luggage is another story.
* Accept misfortune as a blessing. Do not wish for perfect health, or a life without problems. What would you talk about?
* The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single Oy.
* There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?
* Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then, what do you have? Bupkis.
* The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao is not Jewish.
* Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out... Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.
* Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as a wooded glen. And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha with such rounded shoulders.
* Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.
* Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.
* The Torah says, Love your neighbor as yourself…The Buddha says, There is no self.
So ... maybe we're off the hook . . .
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Merriam-Webster Picks Its Word of the Year—and Highlights Nine Others That Defined 2024
Sharp divides have seemed to define America lately—and Merriam-Webster just made it official.
The famous American dictionary publisher on Monday announced that “polarization”—defined as “division into two sharply distinct opposites; especially, a state in which the opinions, beliefs, or interests of a group or society no longer range along a continuum but become concentrated at opposing extremes”—is its Word of the Year for 2024.
The term—which dates back to the early 1800s in reference to light waves but is often used today in relation to politics—was chosen at the end of the world’s biggest-ever election year, including a U.S. presidential race that saw left and right continue to split further apart. Merriam-Webster had already announced in October the introduction of new words to its dictionary in 2024, including “far left” and “far right” as well as “MAGA”—the shorthand for President-elect Donald Trump’s highly-polarizing Make America Great Again movement.
Polarization tends to be decried by observers. It’s bad for democracy, bad for our health. “In a little bit ironic twist to the word,” said Merriam-Webster’s editor at large Peter Sokolowski of the wide usage of “polarization” across the spectrum, in an interview with the Associated Press, “it’s something that actually everyone agrees on.”
But Merriam-Webster didn’t just pick one word for 2024. It also highlighted nine others that the dictionary publisher said “stood out” in search volume on its website this year:
totality
Defined as “the phase of an eclipse during which it is total,” the word “totality” garnered much interest surrounding the total solar eclipse that occurred in April 2024—a rare astronomical event that inspired intrigue and travel.
demure
The word “demure,” was popularized this year by TikTok creator Jools Lebron, who started an Internet trend centered around the phrase “very demure, very mindful.” According to Merriam-Webster: “In its earliest use in the 14th century, demure described people who avoid drawing attention to themselves. Since then, it has also come to describe those whose shyness is a bit of an act.”
fortnight
“Fortnight”—a primarily British word for a span of 14 days—was plucked “out of relative obscurity,” according to Merriam-Webster, by Taylor Swift, who promoted her 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department with a “#ForAFortnightChallenge” on social media and whose song “Fortnight” has been nominated for Record of the Year at the 67th Grammy Awards. “It remains to be seen whether Swift’s use of the term will lead to its wider adoption in American English,” said the dictionary publisher.
pander
Lookups of the verb “pander”—which means “to say, do, or provide what someone wants or demands even though it is not proper, good, or reasonable”—spiked at the height of the U.S. presidential race in mid-October, according to Merriam-Webster, as both sides accused the other of pandering to different groups—from conservative outlets saying Democratic nominee Kamala Harris did it to Black men to Harris’ running mate Tim Walz saying Trump did it when he visited a McDonald’s.
resonate
Merriam-Webster thinks the word “resonate,” defined as “to affect or appeal to someone in a personal or emotional way,” saw an increase in searches because it is one of ChatGPT’s favorite words in its AI-generated writing. The dictionary publisher also said the word appeared often in news stories about “political positions and issues resonating with voters.”
allision
The word “allision” emerged following the crash of a cargo ship into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March, which caused the deaths of six workers. While many news outlets used the word “collision”—which Merriam-Webster says “according to some traditional definitions, refers only to contact between two moving objects”—to describe the incident, many maritime publications opted to use “allision”—defined as “the act or an instance of a ship striking a stationary object.”
weird
“Weird” was weaponized by both sides of the political spectrum this presidential election. Minnesota Gov. Walz gained national prominence by his persistent labeling of Republicans and their platform as “weird,” while Republicans showed no hesitation lobbing the adjective (defined as “of strange or extraordinary character”) back at Democrats. “Weird seemed to be directed at not only the policies, but also the appearance and behavior, of the opposing candidates,” said Merriam-Webster.
cognitive
Like several other words on the list, “cognitive”—which means “of, relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering)”—saw a “notable” rise in searches this year, according to Merriam-Webster, on account of its relevance to the presidential election. President Joe Biden dropped out of the race amid questions about his “cognitive ability,” while Trump also faced accusations of “cognitive decline.” After the election, Merriam-Webster said, the term “cognitive dissonance” (referring to “psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously”) “appeared in discussions” about states that voted for Trump but against restrictions on access to abortion.
democracy
The word, which is defined as “government by the people,“ saw a surge in lookups throughout 2024 “across red states and blue states,” according to Merriam-Webster, “as people tried to fully understand what it means.” In a year best summed up by “polarization,” the dictionary publisher fittingly also put the spotlight back on its inaugural Word of the Year for 2003, when it began participating in the annual tradition. “The word democracy never appears in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution,” Merriam-Webster concluded its announcement, “but it has long been a focus of American and global attention, rarely more so than now.”
https://time.com/7200740/polarization-merriam-webster-word-of-the-year-most-lookups-2024/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MISSING STONES IN STONEHENGE?
Around 4,500 years ago, the famous silhouette of Stonehenge would have looked very different. Writer and archaeologist Mike Pitts digs up clues to the mystery of the circle's long-lost stones.
Stand at Stonehenge on midwinter day, 21 December, as the Sun is setting you can experience a striking event – provided the sky is clear. Position yourself between the tall, outlying Heel Stone and the stone circle, and look south-west through the megaliths. In the closing darkness they appear like a huge crumbling wall, orange light slanting through vertical fissures. In the last quick moments, the Sun disappears from a window formed by two great vertical stones and the horizontal lintel they support. It's dark and cold. Stonehenge, it feels, has swallowed the Sun.
My archaeological colleagues and I are convinced that this alignment is no coincidence: it was designed by the monument's builders. But were you able to see this annual drama 4,500 years ago, the spectacle would be yet more impressive. The solstice sightline was marked by as many as six futher upright pairs. Of the greatest of these – the tallest and the most finely carved stones on the site – now just a single megalith known as Stone 56 is left. A projecting bulge on the top of this stone once fitted into a giant lintel. Now that tenon rises exposed and useless.
And many more upright stones have gone. What happened to these missing stones? Who took them down and where did they go? How do we know they were once there? Can we picture what the completed Stonehenge looked like? Indeed, was it ever finished at all?
These are questions that archaeologists like myself have asked for centuries. We can't answer any of them with certainty. But a long, active search has brought my colleagues and I closer. Through survey, excavation and geological studies have helped to clarify – sometimes in the most surprising ways – one of the big puzzles of Stonehenge: is that all there was?
When we visit Stonehenge today, what we see is almost exactly how it looked when the first accurate plan was made in 1740 by John Wood, a leading architect of his time. The first realistic sketches date from the 16th Century, and while they skimp on detail, the impression remains that little has changed. But don't be fooled. Half the stones have been moved.
That happened between 1901 and 1964, when the authorities were concerned that megaliths might fall on visitors. These were justifiable fears: several large stones had long been propped up with timbers, and lintels skewed threateningly. Many of the uprights were straightened and set in concrete, and a few known to have fallen in historic times were restored. The monument was deliberately secured to look as it had when recorded by John Wood, but archaeological excavations conducted alongside the engineering works revealed another, different Stonehenge. For the first time, there was proof that not all the stones were still there.
Such a suspicion had first been raised in 1666 by John Aubrey, biographer and antiquary, who saw five "cavities in the ground" just inside the circular bank and ditch that surround the present stones at a distance. He thought the hollows were created by the removal of megaliths, suggesting there had once been an outer stone circle 85m (280ft) across that is now entirely missing.
Excavation in that area in the 1920s revealed a perfect circle of 56 pits (assuming regular spacing through unexcavated areas) now known as the Aubrey Holes. Two further unexpected pit rings were found closer to the existing stones. At the time, it was concluded that none of these had held megaliths, though more recently some archaeologists have come to think that the Aubrey Holes are in fact all that remain of an expansive stone circle.
Restoration and excavation resumed in the 1950s and 60s, when more buried holes were found, this time in amongst the present standing stones. Pits in two closely nested half-circles very likely held small megaliths, and other pits indicate that these stones were taken down and rearranged – with the addition of more stones – in a concentric oval and circle. These two were later adjusted to form the present arrangement of a circle and open-ended horseshoe, of which many stones have gone.
In 1979 my own excavation discovered a pit beside the Heel Stone. On the bottom the chalk had been crushed by the weight of a large stone, which would have complemented the present megalith. It was an entirely unexpected find for a young archaeologist – made on the verge of the road as people were gathering for the then infamous Stonehenge pop festival – that has affected how I think about the site ever since: I never take anything for granted. With the Heel Stone, the missing stone would have created a pair either side of the solstice alignment – to frame, looking out to the north-east, the rising midsummer Sun.
The plot thickened in 2009, when a previously unknown stone circle was discovered in an excavation a few minutes' walk away. Some 25 pits would have held megaliths the size of the small ones at Stonehenge. Every excavated pit was empty.
At this point it helps to know more about what I've called the large and small stones. They are composed of different types of rock, which has affected what has gone and what remains. The big stones – the ones that box the setting midwinter Sun and create the famous Stonehenge silhouette – are formed of sarsen, a very hard relatively local sandstone. The small ones, known collectively as bluestones, are a mix of softer rocks, most brought to the site from south-west Wales. If the Aubrey Holes held megaliths, they were only big enough for bluestones – as were pits at the nearby missing circle, whose stones were probably moved to Stonehenge.
Winter solstice celebrations at Stonehenge
Reports in earlier centuries tell of visitors knocking off bits of the stones to keep as souvenirs. Archaeologists assumed these stories were exaggerated, but in 2012 a laser survey of the megaliths revealed the extent of damage. Hardly a stone was spared by the hammers – it was said in the 19th Century you could hire them in nearby Amesbury. In one striking instance, a sarsen lintel that had fallen in 1797 and been re-erected in 1958 looked like a sausage roll compared to its sharp-angled companions that had remained high out of reach – due to the extent of the rock chiseled away.
Between the circle and the Heel Stone, a large sarsen, known as the Slaughter Stone, lies on the ground, one end scored by hammer and chisel holes as if someone had been interrupted in the midst of stealing a part. Excavation in the 1920s found a large pit beside it. Had the stone once standing there been broken up and taken away? Or was it moved thousands of years ago to stand elsewhere on the site?
Perhaps the sarsen circle is now incomplete on the south-west side because the stones there were broken up in recent centuries too. We may never know their fate, but in 2013 after a wet spring and early summer, custodians noticed marks in the now parched grass revealing pits for all the missing stones. It seems the original megaliths there were thinner and less regular, and thus easier to break – implying that was the "back" of the circle
View from the back of the stone circle, behind the Great Trilithon, looking out towards the Heel Stone
Despite searching, no sarsen that was once part of Stonehenge has ever been found away from the monument. It's a different story with the bluestones. An infamous boulder known as the Boles Barrow Stone was given to Salisbury Museum in 1934 by the writer, Siegfried Sassoon, who spotted it in his garden after moving into a new home not far from Stonehenge. This, it was once argued, was proof that a glacier, not Neolithic people, brought all the bluestones to Salisbury Plain. Geology has never backed that case, and archaeologists now agree that the Boles Barrow Stone must have been taken from Stonehenge in the recent past.
Excavation has shown that many bluestones, easier to break than the sarsens, survive as little more than stumps and scattered debris. There are hints from excavations that some of this damage occurred in Roman times, and perhaps even in the Bronze Age, not many centuries after the stones had been erected. One theory is that pieces were thought to have healing powers.
In one case, however, we know exactly who took some chips, when and why. They unlocked one of the most remarkable discoveries ever made about Stonehenge.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241220-the-archaeological-mystery-of-stonehenges-long-lost-megaliths
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SOME GOOD NEWS ABOUT THE CLIMATE
Global temperatures rose and extreme weather ramped up, but there were also some significant breakthroughs for the climate this year. Here are seven quiet wins that may have gone under your radar in 2024.
It's been another tough year for the climate and nature. From the 1.5C threshold set to be breached for a full year for the first time, to the disappointment of vulnerable nations at this year's UN climate summit, it can feel like the challenge is overwhelming. Then there's the extreme weather increasingly impacting both poor nations and rich countries.
But this year also saw some extraordinary breakthroughs for climate and nature. In case you missed them, we have rounded up some of the biggest wins for our planet from the past year.
THE END OF COAL IN THE UK
The UK closed its last coal-fired power plant in 2024. It was a symbolic moment as the UK was the first country in the world to use coal for public power generation and the fossil fuel was the lifeblood of the industrial revolution.
On 30 September, the turbines at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant in Nottinghamshire fell silent and its chimneys stopped belching out fumes. The site will now undergo a two-year decommissioning and demolition process. It is unclear what the site will become after that, but one proposal is to turn it into a battery storage site.
This has already been done in West Yorkshire, at the decommissioned power plant Ferrybridge C, which has a storage capacity of 150MW, enough to power 250,000 homes. As countries aim to rapidly decarbonize their economies, many former fossil fuel power plants are proving to be promising sites for industrial-scale batteries.
Read more about the UK coal plant that became a giant battery in this story by Michael Marshall.
A GLOBAL SURGE IN GREEN POWER
Renewable energy sources are growing rapidly around the world. In the US, wind energy generation hit a record in April, exceeding coal-fired generation.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects the world to add 5,500 GW of renewable energy capacity between now and 2030 and to grow global renewable capacity 2.7 times compared to 2022, slightly falling short of a UN goal to triple capacity by 2030. By the end of this decade, renewable energy sources are set to meet almost half of all electricity.
The lion's share of this growth comes from just one country: China. By 2030, China is forecast to make up at least half of the world's cumulative renewable electricity capacity, according to the IEA.
Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, noted at a press conference that the world's "massive growth in renewables" was mainly driven by economics rather than government policies, as renewables – especially solar – were the cheapest option in almost every country in the world. The major expansion was a "beautiful story", he said, which he could sum up in two words: "China" and "solar".
THE RIVERS, MOUNTAINS, WAVES AND WHALES GIVEN LEGAL PERSONHOOD
Back in 2021, the Ecuadorian government issued a landmark ruling stating that mining in its Los Cedros cloud forest violated the rights of nature. Another ruling in Ecuador stated that pollution had violated the rights of the Machángara River that runs through the capital, Quito.
This year, a report was published which found that such rulings can indeed help protect endangered ecosystems. Read more about Los Cedros legal personhood in this article by Becca Warner.
Beyond Ecuador, a growing number of natural features and spaces were granted legal personhood in 2024. In New Zealand, the peaks of Egmont National Park – renamed Te Papakura o Taranaki – were recognized as ancestral mountains and jointly became a legal person, known as Te Kāhui Tupua.
In Brazil, part of the ocean was given legal personhood – with the coastal city of Linhares recognizing its waves as living beings, granting them the right to existence, regeneration and restoration. Meanwhile, a new treaty formed by Pacific Indigenous leaders saw whales and dolphins officially recognised as "legal persons”.
"A case filed to protect whales from cross-ocean shipping may rely on an individual claiming to be harmed because her ability to whale watch has been diminished," says Jacqueline Gallant, a lawyer working in climate change, biodiversity and rights. "If whales themselves were recognized as legal subjects, the case could more accurately focus on the harms to the whales themselves as opposed to the individual claiming an ancillary harm in order for the court to hear the claim.”
Gallant, who works for the Earth Rights Research and Action program at New York University School of Law, says they are pushing the boundaries of legal imagination.
"Legal personhood provides the understanding that nature and living non-human beings should be understood as subjects [as opposed to objects] – with intrinsic value and interests and needs of their own," she says.
NEW OCEAN PROTECTIONS FOR THE AZORES
The North Atlantic saw a new marine protected area (MPA) announced by the Azores. When established, it will be the largest in the region, spanning 30% of the sea around the Portuguese archipelago. Half of the 111,000 sq miles (287,000 sq km) protected area will be "fully protected", with no fishing or other natural resource extraction, according to the initiative behind the MPA. The other half will be "highly protected.”
The area contains nine hydrothermal vents, 28 species of marine mammals and 560 species of fish, among many others.
MPAs can be highly effective in protecting biodiversity if their restrictions are adequately enforced. Overall, just 2.8% of the world's oceans are effectively protected and only 8.3% are conserved, according to a report by Bloomberg Philanthropies Ocean Initiative.
AMAZON DEFORESTATION REACHES A NINE-YEAR LOW
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon dropped to a nine-year low in 2024, falling by more than 30% in the 12 months to July, according to data released by Brazil's national space research institute, INPE. Roughly 2,428 sq miles (6,288 sq km) of the rainforest were destroyed, an area larger than the size of the US state of Delaware. While this area is still vast, it is the lowest annual loss since 2015. Deforestation fell despite the fact that fires in the Brazilian Amazon increased almost 18-fold during the same time period following a historic drought.
The development comes almost two years after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office and pledged to end deforestation by 2030 and crack down on illegal logging.
CONSERVATION AND BIODIVERSITY
A major review of conservation initiatives this year found that more often than not they are effective in slowing or reversing biodiversity loss. The scientists reviewed 665 trials of conservation measures across the world, including several historic trials, and found they had had a positive effect in two out of every three cases..
One example of this is the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative, which worked in Kazakhstan with local partners and other international organizations to save the critically endangered Saiga Antelope in the Golden Steppe grassland from extinction. The project used careful, science-based monitoring, tagging and habitat protection and restoration to ensure the best recovery for the Saiga Antelope, which numbered just 20,000 in 2003. Today, 2.86 million of the antelope roam the Golden Steppe, and it has been moved from "critically endangered" to "near threatened" status on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List.
INDIGENOUS-LED EFFORTS REPLENISH SKIES AND RIVERS
In California, wildlife has benefited from decades-long drives by the Native American Yurok Tribe to replenish animals on tribal territories. In 2024, this culminated in salmon returning to the Klamath River.
After a 100-year hiatus, the fish were spotted in Oregon's Klamath River basin, following an historic dam removal further downstream in the California stretch of the Klamath. In August, the final of four dams were removed – in what was America's biggest dam removal project – following pressure from environmentalists and tribes.
Tribal members expected salmon to take months to return to the upper stretches of the river, as their numbers had been decimated by poor river health caused by the dam blocking natural water flow. But in October biologists sighted the fish in Oregon tributaries.
"What's surprising is the sheer number of fish that are back, and the geographic range," said Barry McCovey, senior fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe. "I couldn't believe they'd been spotted in Oregon. It was incredible news to hear – it was mind boggling. When I heard, I was like 'wait, already?!'. They've exceeded any expectations anyone had.”
Meanwhile, an intensive program to reintroduce California condors, saw growing success too. The tribe has been running a release project for the vulture-like bird, which is sacred to the tribe, since 2008. On 4 October of this year, the tribe released two more of the birds, bringing the total of California condors in Yurok territory to 18.
"They're doing great," says Tiana Williams, director of the Yurok Tribe Wildlife Department and member of the Yurok Nation. "It's been really exciting to watch the flock expand and change in their dynamics.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241216-seven-quiet-breakthroughs-for-climate-and-nature-in-2024-you-might-have-missed
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LOWER THAN THE ANGELS: A HISTORY OF SEX AND CHRISTIANITY
St. Sebastian: a gay icon?
A majority of Christians today believe that their faith involves seeing heterosexual, monogamous, and procreative sexual intercourse as the norm. African Anglicans and Russian Orthodox denounce homosexuality as a harbinger of Western degeneration; the pope joins American evangelicals in detesting abortion. The Holy Family stands with the nuclear family. Diarmaid MacCulloch’s irritation at such ahistorical conservatism has moved him to track the sheer variety of Christian theologies of sex over the ages with Gibbonian wit and occasional asperity. "Lower than the Angels" is an intricate survey with a clear moral: Christians should think twice before casting the first stone.
The Bible was always too contradictory and opaque to rule Christian thinking on gender or sexuality. The currency and meaning of proof texts fluctuated with the ambitions of Church leaders and the elites to which they catered. Outside influences mattered too. Christians absorbed monogamy from the Classical societies in which they were at first an invisible minority, even if they abhorred their resort to abortion and infanticide.
They studiously overlooked the polygamists of the Hebrew scriptures, just as they rejected male genital mutilation. Their puritanism was also more Classical than Jewish. Plenty of wild men – and some wild women – in Egypt and Syria tried to relinquish sexuality altogether, with Origen even castrating himself. Yet influential theologians emulated Roman thinkers in calling men to show self-restraint, but not abstinence, in their sexual lives.
The New Testament encouraged this chastened attachment to marriage. Paul recommended that it was better to marry than to burn with lust. He also said that husbands and wives owed each other sexual satisfaction – the ‘marital debt’. The main thing was not to get carried away: Jerome condemned men who loved their wives too much as adulterers.
Only in the East were attitudes less neurotic. Because Greek theologians regarded all sexuality as fallen, they were less flustered about what sort or degree of intercourse was sinful. Societies such as Russia that adopted Orthodoxy inherited this ‘sane because sex-negative’ approach.
Missionaries beyond Rome had a hard job in getting pagan societies to accept the austere mores of the Mediterranean. Its elites were loath to give up the concubines whose children ensured their biological succession. Elsewhere too, Christians bent to the requirements of the powerful. Bishops from the Dyophysite Church of the East could not follow their Western counterparts in adopting celibacy, because it was a capital crime in Zoroastrian Iran.
It therefore took centuries to build Christendom – the word is an Anglo-Saxon coinage for a sacred society permeated with Christian morals. From the 11th century, a crusader papacy with a newly exalted vision of the Eucharist demanded celibacy from the priests who celebrated that mysterious sacrifice. The onus was now on the laity to copulate.
The clergy now presided over marriages, which joined the Eucharist as one of seven sacraments. Spirituality now embodied family values: Joseph became a venerable figure, rather than a complication for the perpetual virginity of Mary; Christians decorated cribs and visited ‘Holy Houses’ at Walshingham and Loreto, childhood homes of Jesus that had miraculously landed there from Palestine.
Charges of sexual as well as intellectual deviance motivated the persecution of heretics: the Bogomils of Bulgaria were the first ‘buggers’. Christians, who massacred Jews after accusing them of desecrating Eucharistic wafers and murdering saintly children, now represented the circumcision of Christ as their first act of sacrilegious violence.
Their hatred had its blind spots. There was no concerted harrying of homosexuals. Monks were free in their homosocial cloisters to develop a rich literature of mutual infatuation. Spirituality and mysticism were gender fluid, with beardless angels symbolizing life beyond sexual binaries.
The Reformation challenged but finally restated the code of Christendom in a different key. Protestant ministers who rejected celibacy presented their new families as models of monogamy. Martin Luther’s scriptural defense of polygamy found few takers and was quickly forgotten.
Tolerance for prostitution and children born out of wedlock declined.
Although both Protestantism and Catholicism relaxed their grip on Western societies in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is unclear how quickly sexual behavior shifted as a result.
MacCulloch suggests that commerce, print, and urbanization freed minds and bodies from clerical control. He takes an ‘appreciable number’ of trans marriages as one high water mark of this emancipation – although the monograph he cites found only ‘dozens’ of such cases. And while Christendom wobbled at home, missionaries exported its clenched mores to the extra-European world.
It was technological change that really scuppered the churches. The rubber condom and the contraceptive pill separated intercourse from procreation, making sex fun and undermining the argument that homosexuality was against nature. Some Christians responded more nimbly than others. MacCulloch credits his fellow Anglicans with readily taking to condoms and the defense of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. By contrast, Rome’s unhappy celibates made its institutions hotbeds of sexual abuse and ‘poisonous silence’. Pope Paul VI’s fossilized vision of natural law prompted his last-ditch stand against contraception in 1968.
The sixties may not have swung for Catholics, but MacCulloch’s conclusions breathe the optimism of that decade. Ever more people will follow their authentic desires in future, with the blessing of Jesus, a ‘playful’ teacher innocent of the repression founded on his name. This oddly frictionless view of future sex expresses a liberal Anglican hope that such lingering prejudices as homophobia are peculiarly Christian forms of bigotry, which will fade when the churches complete their enlightenment. It is the last and certainly the nicest of the faith commitments charted in this compelling book.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/lower-angels-diarmaid-macculloch-review?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_campaign=9c7c13146f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_20_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fceec0de95-9c7c13146f-1214148&mc_cid=9c7c13146f
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BLACK HOLES AND THE DECAY OF EVERYTHING
It was long thought that black holes, once they formed, would be stable forever, but that story changed significantly with the work of Stephen Hawking in 1974.
Black holes actually emit tiny amounts of radiation continuously, and on enormously long timescales of ~10^67 years or greater, they’ll eventually evaporate away entirely.
In 2023, a provocative paper suggested that this radiation isn’t limited to black holes, implying that everything eventually decays away. Now, a year-and-a-half later, here’s what we’re thinking about.
When black holes were first derived within the context of general relativity, it was thought to be an absolute, irrevocable end-state of a completely collapsed object. Aside from possessing mass, electric charge, and angular momentum, no other properties would matter, and so long as nothing else interacted with the black hole, those properties would persist — and would persist unchanged — forever.
That all changed, however, when people began treating the Universe as quantum in nature: with quantum fields (like the electromagnetic field) permeating all of space. This would include even the space around a black hole, and quantum effects in highly curved spacetime would lead to the gradual emission of radiation that now bears the name of the person who predicted it: Hawking radiation. On long enough timescales, even the most massive black holes would eventually evaporate away.
Last year, a fascinating new study suggested that Hawking radiation might not be for black holes alone, but would rather be produced by all masses that curved space by a significant enough amount. Is this still thought to be correct? That’s what Klaus Castren wants to know, as he asks:
“Could we have an update on the concept of Hawking radiation not originating only from a black hole’s event horizon, and that other massive objects would also produce it? I find the idea disturbing that all massive objects would do this (causing their eventual evaporation?) without us understanding how the particles they consist of would decay. What would a bowling ball floating eternally in infinite space look like once half of its mass would have been radiated out via Hawking radiation?”
Oh, it’s disturbing alright, and the answer to all of your questions is, “We still aren’t sure.”
It will take a significant amount of future work to determine whether non-black hole evaporation truly occurs. Perhaps the most difficult task associated with the endeavor will involve working out whether proton decay can actually occur; with only ~10^58 protons in our entire Solar System, it would take billions of years of continuously monitoring every single one just to have a chance at catching one suspected decay event.
Hawking radiation is a certainty for black holes, but we must now strongly consider the possibility that its effects apply to potentially even all massive objects. How profound is this consideration? The ultimate stability of practically everything in the Universe hangs in the balance.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/everything-hawking-radiation/?utm_source=firefox-newab-en-tus
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GRAPHENE IN THE NEWS AGAIN
The nanomaterial called graphene is at the center of a lot of conversations right now for a number of exciting health and consumer reasons.
What is graphene?
Graphene, which was first isolated by scientists in 2004, is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice and is just one atom thick (measuring 0.345Nm). This is one of the reasons why it’s known as a "wonder" material among scientists.
It holds a lot of impressive qualities despite having the thickness of one carbon atom. It is 200 times stronger than steel and is an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, it can absorb light and resists corrosion.
So far, graphene has been named as a possible way to improve electronic devices, including phone screens, as well as clothing, paints, and it may have the potential to create new and better ways to purify water. There are also suggestions that it could improve human well-being, such as in brain surgery, and there is active research into whether it can be used against cancer and other health conditions, however research is still underway to find out the long term effects.
Research on graphene
Dr. Mark Miller, from the University of Edinburgh, has been involved in these efforts to understand how the material could impact our lives as well as potential side effects. One recent study regarding graphene’s impact on human health found controlled inhalation of a type of graphene known as graphene oxide does not carry short-term heart or lung risks.
The study involved “carefully controlled inhalation” of the graphene oxide, which is a water-compatible form of the material. There were 14 volunteers who breathed the material through a face mask for two hours while cycling on stationary bikes in a purpose-designed mobile exposure chamber.
Although the findings were promising, scientists are still working to find out if larger or long-term doses might produce different results. Researchers tested their lung function, blood pressure, blood clotting, and markers of inflammation. The findings showed a “slight suggestion” that inhaling the material may “influence” the way blood clots, but it is believed the effect would be very small.
“Nanomaterials such as graphene hold such great promise, but we must ensure they are manufactured in a way that is safe before they can be used more widely in our lives,” Dr. Mark Miller said in a press release about the study.
“Being able to explore the safety of this unique material in human volunteers is a huge step forward in our understanding of how graphene could affect the body. With careful design we can safely make the most of nanotechnology.”
Meanwhile, Professor Kostas Kostarelos, from the University of Manchester and the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) in Barcelona explained why this study is so profound. “This is the first-ever controlled study involving healthy people to demonstrate that very pure forms of graphene oxide – of a specific size distribution and surface character – can be further developed in a way that would minimize the risk to human health.”
“It has taken us more than 10 years to develop the knowledge to carry out this research, from a materials and biological science point of view, but also from the clinical capacity to carry out such controlled studies safely by assembling some of the world’s leading experts in this field.”
https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/what-is-graphene-oxide
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POPULAR SEED OILS MAY BE CONTRIBUTING TO THE RISE IN COLON CANCER
Popular cooking oils used in ultra-processed Western diets may be causing a surge in colon cancer cases, a new US government-led study has shown.
Unhealthy seed oils like soy, sunflower, sufflower, grapeseed, canola, and corn could trigger chronic inflammation in the body, the groundbreaking research found.
Until now evidence linking cooking oil to colon cancer has been inconclusive.
But the recent American study identified seed oils as the possible contributing factor when they examined tumors from more than 80 people with colon cancer, aged between 30 and 85.
The tumors showed increased levels of bioactive lipids, which are small oily molecules produced when the body metabolizes seed oils, compared to healthier fats, according to the study published in the Gut journal.
As well as increasing inflammation, bioactive lipids hinder the body’s natural healing process and foster tumor growth.
Oils rich in omega-3 fatty acids, found in avocados and olives, are a healthier alternative, the researchers said.
Renowned physician-scientist Dr. Timothy Yeatman said the findings stressed an urgent need to reevaluate parts of the Western diet, including added sugars, saturated fats, ultra-processed foods, chemicals and inflammatory seed oils.
“It is well known that patients with unhealthy diets have increased inflammation in their bodies,” said Dr. Yeatman, who is also an associate center director for Translational Research and Innovation at the TGH Cancer Institute.
“We now see this inflammation in the colon tumors themselves, and cancer is like a chronic wound that won’t heal — if your body is living off of daily ultra-processed foods, its ability to heal that wound decreases due to the inflammation and suppression of the immune system that ultimately allows the cancer to grow.”
But top US health institutions have clarified that consuming moderate amounts of seed oils as part of a balanced diet has not been shown to cause cancer.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/cooking-oil-sunflower-corn-colon-cancer-symptoms-b2665511.html
Oriana:
Stay on the safe side: use traditional sources of fat like butter (especially grass-fed) and extra-virgin olive oil. I regard corn oil and all seed oil as poison. They are high in pro-inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids.
I use Irish grass-fed butter and extra-virgin olive oil, sometimes in combination.
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STOP MIDDLE-AGE SPREAD WITH A PRE-MEAL RITUAL
So many of us battle an expanding waistline after age 50. Fortunately, you can trim up to 17 pounds off your waist and hips on any healthy eating plan just by dialing down your production of the stress hormone cortisol.
The reason? Cortisol encourages tissues to slow their calorie burn so they can store as much fat as possible. But as levels of this stress hormone drop, fat-burning metabolism soars.
A simple way to destress: Take three minutes before each meal to breathe slowly and deeply, letting your belly expand and contract with each breath. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital say this simple trick can cut diet-sabotaging cortisol production by as much as 33 percent.
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BENEFITS OF PURPLE CABBAGE
The biggest difference between green cabbage and purple cabbage is that purple cabbage contains a large amount of anthocyanins, while ordinary cabbage does not have this nutrient. Therefore, purple cabbage is slightly better in terms of anti-oxidation, beauty and anti-aging.
Anti-aging
Purple cabbage is rich in anthocyanins. As a strong antioxidant, anthocyanins help anti-aging. And the rich vitamin C it contains is the most important antioxidant.
Supports skin health
Purple cabbage is rich in sulfur, which has a healing effect on various skin itching, eczema and other problems, so eating this kind of vegetables frequently is very beneficial for maintaining skin health.
Helps prevent cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases
Purple cabbage contains anthocyanins and crude fiber, which can help us lower cholesterol, enhance blood vessel toughness, and clean up "blood vessel garbage.”
Nourishes and protects the liver
Purple cabbage is very rich in cysteine and high-quality protein. These substances can not only assist the liver, but also stimulate our body to repair liver cells.
Antibacterial and anti-inflammatory
Purple cabbage has excellent antibacterial and anti-inflammatory effects. It can be used to relieve sore throat, stomachache and toothache.
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Ending on beauty:
Insomnia. Homer. Taut sails.
I have counted the list of ships
halfway: that long-stretched flock,
that flight of cranes that rose up over Hellas.
As if a wedge of cranes on off to far-off lands —
on the heads of emperors the froth of gods —
where do you sail? If there were not Helen,
what would Troy be to you, o Achaean husbands?
The sea, and Homer — all is moved by love.
To which should I listen then? And now Homer is silent,
and the black sea, declaiming, roars,
and with it heavy thunder nears the pillow of my bed.
~ Osip Mandelstam
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